Barbershop Business Plan

Executive Summary

A plan how to start a barbershop includes some things to be done prior to the start of the business. To start the business you need to know how it will be financed. The business needs a location that will help the customer access it with a lot of ease thus making it grow. The business needs to also to meet legal requirements. That is, it should be licensed and meet the standard required by relevant authority. The business plan should show how the business would expand. This is where the growth strategies are stipulated. 

The plan should also see to it that the competitors are well known to ensure that one gets the market share that the business will be operating. It is also analyzes the financial statement of a business helps to show at a glance the viability of the business. This may also be used to apply for a loan when need.  All this is done by well understanding of the market by first doing market survey. This will help in setting up of the business at the right location. In addition, the business management will be able to put competitive prices for their products.

A barbershop is a business unit that deals with glooming of hair. It is such a sustainable business as hair glooming is more of a basic need than a luxury. People will always need it. Styles may be short lived, but haircut is here to stay. This poses barbershop to be one of the most promising businesses that if well managed is liable of doing very well. Unlike in many businesses, customer retention in barbershop business is very high. Customers is should be well served to like the service of a barber. They will rarely go anywhere else once they are satisfied by the service. If good service is provided, ones customer will always come as far as the location of the barbershop I convenient to them. Barbershops are kind of businesses that acquire their customer through the word of mouth. One can start this business for fan but ends up being very rewarding in terms of cash (Moran & Johnson 61).

Once one gets an ideal of starting a business, the most important thing is to know how the business will operate in term of ownership.  The business can be a sole proprietorship where one person operates it. This is where the owner of the business is an overall boss and enjoys all the profits and has no one to share with the business loss. He therefore manages the business with the help of people he/she has recruited who are all answerable to him. The owner makes sure that the business works in line with its goals that will help meet business objective.

The business formation may take a partnership direction. This is where two or more people come together having the same motive and idea of starting of the business. The day-to-day running of the business is done consultatively among them. The profit is shared according to the level of share that one holds in the business. The loss is shared equally among them also. For all the decision that affects the business, there must be consultation among all stakeholders and no action is taken before they get to a consensus (Juuso, 66).

The barbershop can also be in for of a company. The company may be private or public. In private company, the shareholders are defined and the company owners decide on whom to be shareholder while in the public company any bodies can a shareholder. The company requires seven people to fifty for a private company and limitless for a public company. To form an organization, due legal process is followed according to rules and regulation of federal government to meet international standards. The company is learnt by board of governors on behalf of the members. They improvise rules and regulations that are followed to meet the company's objective (Ford, Et al 31).

 Once the business structure is decided, the next important issue is the business equity.  One has to know where to get the fund. In a case of the sole proprietorship, the source of fund may be from personal saving, inheritance, donations from family or friends, grants or personal loans. Partnership gets their funds from their contributions or from loan. The company gets their fund from shares bought by the members. In our case, we will deal with the sole proprietorship.

The most important part of the business is how well one knows how it operates.  This well established by market survey. Before starting a sole proprietor barbershop, make sure that you get to the market and analyze every section of the business. From the location, customers, trends, market size, competitors and market sales. The survey should also include the service offered by the competitors. This will help in segmenting the market share. The price at which the customer pays for the service offered is also very important.

This will help to establish a unique method of offering barbershop service that will be more satisfying to the customers without making loss. In the survey, one may include demographic factors such as sex, economic status of your potential customers and age before setting price of the service. Market size deals with the number of customers who on average buy or get the barbershop services. The trend of the market shows the customer variation in terms of how they get services. For example, more people may have hair cut during the summer seasons than they do during the winter seasons (Patsula, 112).  The market sales show the data of the customer frequency to get the offered product and services. The market survey can be done by use of a questionnaire or by any other appropriate method.

Business location

The location of the business is very vital in its growth. Once the fund is integrated and the business formation is decided after a market survey, location is then the next issue. For barbershop, the business must be strategically placed.  This is very important for customer to locate it easily. The best location is in a busy street where many people can be able to access it. This location will enable the business to compete successfully with others in terms of accessibility and getting reach to the customers. A good location of the business will ease the business lots of budgetary allocation of advertisement money. It also helps in the customer retention, as they do not go round in search of the premises.

This is where the business owner strategies on how to enter the market.  The price of each service is well put in place. The price should be well thought of not to deprive off the customer's money. This is because if they know that the service offered is not equivalent to the service offered they will quit.  The next issue is the sale tactics. For a business to grow, one has to have different tactics that are unique from the others. This will help the business be identified from others helping it compete fully in the market. The survey will also help one come up with the best and cost effective method of advertisement (Moran & Johnson 71)

Good advertisement skills will help the business to sell its self-well among the very many competitors. The business should also consider the mode of advertisement to be used to ensure that the targeted customers have been accessed by the information.  Business promotion is another issue to be but in consideration. The business should be in a position to work on promotion to ensure that the customers are conversant with their products. The promotion should be simple and cost effective. The barbershop business must put a strategy on how the advertisement and promotion will be conducted. It should stipulate how frequent this will be done. The amount of money that should be used also should be put in place. For the advertisement, it should be precise and easy to understand at a glance. It should also be economical and up to date. This will help the barbershop business to be more pronounced to dispense it services amidst intense competition.

The operating plan will show the business layout. This will show the building, size of the business, the facilities and the labor force employed in the business. It will also include the strategic plan of business improvement in terms of materials and facilities. The better the operating plan of the business, the better the positioning of the business in the competitive world. The labor force should be well organized and their duties well established to ensure that the business grows.  Each person should have a distinct role in the barbershop. For the one who are offering the services, they should specialize on that line. For the management, they should specialize on that line to ensure that no conflict duties.

For the business to succeed there must be people who are managing it. The management should be distinct from the lower management to the top management. The line of management should clearly elaborate the accountability of each personnel to each other. The management structure should be simple to understand to all personnel (Patsula, 42).  . The structure should also show the compensation of the personnel in each level and the ownership of each personnel in the business. The compensation of the personnel in the barbershop should be according to the service they lender to the business and the level of competence. This is a very sensitive part especially when hiring the personnel. A business is liable to grow and achieve its objective according to the personnel employed. If they are not motivated, they tend to be reluctant to their work. This leads to the downfall of the business. Nevertheless, the salaries and wages given to them should not be too high to make the business work under pressure to meet the cost of their remuneration.  This might jeopardize the business and throw it in loss making enterprise. Thus, their compensation should reflect their output to the business, their competency and the profit the barbershop is making.

The business should have a financial plan on how it will use its available capital. This will include the projected cash flow for the year ended, profit and loss predicted and the balance sheet of the finance to be used. The projected cash flow will be able to show the amount of cash that gets in and out of the barbershop.  It also shows the costs of operating the business and the anticipated profit to be made in the business in one year. The profit and loss account will show if the business will make loss or profit. Finally, the balance sheet is used to show the net worth of the business. It acts as an evidence of any sales or purchase made in the barbershop.

The important things in the business are always recorded to ensure that references are gotten when required during the operation of the business. Thus, is done by recording, organizing and documenting such thing as profit margin, proposed capitalization, total remuneration, break-even point and so on. The record should be well reserved to ensure that they can be traced wherever they are required. They are also very important during loan application process and in the implementation of the plan to a running business (Moran & Johnson 94).

A business is a very important document because it acts as a direction towards the accomplishment of once entrepreneurial dream. It is a road map towards achieving a business goal. It highlights and shows at a glance the steps that will be followed to operate a certain business idea to a practical skill. A well-researched business plan helps to solve unseen problems that would occur during the running of the business. This is less expensive because if any adjustment is required, it is only a matter of plucking the paper and changing the information to the required one. However, if the business is done in try and error method, any change to alter its operation means incurring a certain expense. In addition, the idea may not work at the end, so the only expense one will incur is paper work only (Juuso, 55).

Prior planning is also very important as it saves time and energy. Every bit of work required to be done is there in the paper work. Thus, the only thing is to implement it. This eliminate the time that can be used to try issues in the business sector and the amount of money one can incur. Once the barbershop business is viable, well-gloomed personnel are employed to implement the business plan.